cron stops silently

[David Adam]

Phil,

On Fri, 27 May 2005, Phil Brennan wrote:
> Since updating our server to 5.4-STABLE, I've noticed a very strange
> problem with cron.
> Sometimes it just decides to stop, for no apparent reason. It stops at
> different times, it doesn't seem to be affected by any particular
> cronjob.
> There are no messages about this in any logfile, it just stops running
> and I have to start it manually. Obviously this is a major PITA. Can
> anyone help me to debug this problem further? I really don't know
> where to look. Searches of all freebsd mailing lists have turned up
> with nothing.

I've only got access to a FreeBSD 4.11 machine at the moment, but have you
tried the -x debug flags listed under cron(8)? (4.11 doesn't have rcNG, so
I can't tell you where it's started or whether you'll need to redirect
output, but I'm sure a bit of diggin around will show you.)

Cheers,

David Adam
zanchey at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au